Parkinson's Law.
Sometimes following the law means being mediocre
The same can be good for an official and bad for a designer, programmer and copywriter. How can we follow the law without making it worse?
Poor ancient Greeks — they believed so much that three beautiful goddesses of fate used to decide on the timing for everything in the world. But it turned out that it’s done by a stout bald Briton.
Cyril Northcote Parkinson is the man who explained to us that if we allot half an hour for washing dishes, we will do it for half an hour, and if we give ourselves fifteen minutes, we’ll manage to do it for fifteen minutes. Parkinson’s Law says: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."
You can’t argue with it, because this law is empirical, i.e. based on the experience and observation, and this sounds like checkmate. Before wording the law, Parkinson had been observing the work of British state organizations. They say no official got fired after his observations. They just greatly reduced the time for completing tasks.
You can’t argue with it, because this law is empirical, i.e. based on the experience and observation, and this sounds like checkmate. Before wording the law, Parkinson had been observing the work of British state organizations. They say no official got fired after his observations. They just greatly reduced the time for completing tasks.
How to use Parkinson’s Law
There are several tasks in your plan for the day:
- Deadline for the first task is the closing time of the service center. If the service center closes at 6 p.m., and it takes half an hour plus half an hour for talking at the service center, then you need to leave the house at 5 p.m.
- If you plan to have meal at 2 p.m., it takes you an hour to cook lunch, and then start cooking at 1 p.m.
- If SMM advise to share posts on a weekend at 8 p.m., and you can write it for an hour, so, get down to writing the text at 7 p.m.
Caution! Mediocre
You may say that washing the dishes, taking the microwave to a service center, cooking lunch is never the same as sharing a post on social networks. Neither does it take the same time for drawing a picture or making a program code.
If you’re serious about the content and focus on quality of your posts, an hour may not be enough.
This is the main reason why designers, programmers and copywriters hate Parkinson’s Law most. To carry out work thinking "The main thing is to meet the deadline otherwise I can be fired" sounds not nice. But there is always a chance: maybe I’m not going to be fired. Most often chief executives want great code, great design and great text, even if they’re crazy about graphics. They can fight for the schedule with all the passion — this is their job. Ours is to fight with the same passion for the code, design and text to be so good.
If you’re serious about the content and focus on quality of your posts, an hour may not be enough.
This is the main reason why designers, programmers and copywriters hate Parkinson’s Law most. To carry out work thinking "The main thing is to meet the deadline otherwise I can be fired" sounds not nice. But there is always a chance: maybe I’m not going to be fired. Most often chief executives want great code, great design and great text, even if they’re crazy about graphics. They can fight for the schedule with all the passion — this is their job. Ours is to fight with the same passion for the code, design and text to be so good.
Moral: do not follow your desire to do mediocre to meet deadlines. Do it awesome
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